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Chapter XXVII.
Induction of Colleague.

The usual steps had been taken in accordance with the law of the Church to provide a colleague and successor for Dr Stuart. The Synod had been approached by memorial from the congregation praying for the required sanction to proceed to the appointment. A Commission in the Home Country conversant with all the circumstances and requirements of the case had been nominated to make the selection, and every precaution and safeguard had been used to secure that the person chosen should be in all respects competent to fulfil the duties of the high and responsible position of coadjutor to Dr Stuart. Very honestly and conscientiously the Commissioners applied themselves to their task, and after diligent search and inquiry made, they placed the call in the hands of the Rev. A. P. Davidson, of St. Fergus, Aberdeenshire.

"… Davidson, of St. Fergus Free Church, has been selected," the Doctor wrote to us on 9th January, 1890, "as my colleague and successor. He is highly commended for scholarship, evangelical views, preaching gift, power of work, and good sense. He leaves for New Zealand at the end of February…. I hope the stranger and I will have in the new relation the gifts of grace that will sanctify it, page 191and overrule it for the extension of the Kingdom…. I am keeping well, and working away morn, noon, and night, but when I get fatigued it takes me an increasingly longer time to recruit…."

In view of the increasing expenditure which would now be entailed by the appointment of a colleague, a movement was set on foot to remove the Church debt, and resulted, to the Doctor's joy, in a success far beyond his most sanguine expectations. "Mr Cameron," he wrote on 27th March, 1890, "our elder, has begun an effort to sweep off our debt of £2800. I don't think the time is favourable. He started yesterday with £500 from Glendining, £200 from E. Smith, £200 from Downie Stewart, and £110 from myself. He is bent on giving all a chance to help in the good cause. The Lord help him! In six weeks Mr Cameron obtained promises amounting to £2071, and eventually the entire indebtedness was removed. At the annual soiree held in Old Knox Church on 12th November, 1892, Dr Stuart said: "In my Church Calendar I have marked this year 'Our Golden Year,' not because it has overtopped former years in quantity or quality of spiritual work, but because it has witnessed the deliverance of our ecclesiastical erections from the encumbrance of debt. A believer in the Gospel of cash payments, the extinction of our Church debt has given me unmixed satisfaction. We owe much to those who on several occasions have powerfully worked towards the goal, and especially to Mr Cameron, whose effort, begun some eighteen months ago, has been entirely successful through the blessing of God and the page 192favour of the people." The total cost of the new Church, including expenditure on stone wall and other things connected with the embellishment of the grounds, amounted to about £20,000, and it was with deeply grateful feelings that the Doctor announced to his congregation the entire liquidation of the debt.

The induction of the Rev. A. P. Davidson as colleague and successor to Dr Stuart took place at Knox Church on 30th April, 1890, in the presence of a very large congregation. Mr E. B. Cargill, in presenting a gown and cassock from the ladies of the congregation to their junior minister, said, among other fitting words of welcome:—"You have come into this congregation to take a charge in a pastorate where we hope there will always prevail that feeling of brotherly kindness, mutual sympathy, and good fellowship which has prevailed without serious interruption during the thirty years of its existence. We have had, no doubt, our differences from time to time, but I think I may say that during the thirty years this congregation has existed no serious difference has ever arisen among us—we have all been at one. For this I think I may safely say we are largely indebted to the attitude maintained amongst us from the first by our loved and revered pastor, Dr Stuart, who, not only by his unselfish and continuous labours has done everything which his powers enabled him to do in his high office as pastor, but who has uniformly exhibited that large-hearted, broad sympathy, and friendship which has come home to every member of this congregation from first to last, and which has in itself acted as a bond of page 193union amongst us, in the presence of which anything like discord never has been able to show its face. That, sir, is the kind of family you have come to be a member of. The facts which I have stated carry with them, no doubt, a certain degree of responsibility, for it will lie heavily upon you if by any act of yours you should mar that happy feeling which has so long existed. But, sir, on the other hand, you may take encouragement from the fact that you will come amongst a people actuated by that strong bond of union, in the kindliness and brotherly feeling of which I hope you will in every sense be a full partaker." Mr Davidson received a public welcome at a conversazione, which was held in the Garrison Hall, on 2nd May. Dr Stuart, who presided, gave an interesting sketch of the early history of the Church, and an address was presented to the junior minister.

A few days later the Doctor wrote to us: "I have been down with a sharp attack of bronchitis and feeble action of the heart. The first time in my life I had to get a professional nurse. I am a good deal better, but the illness has left, what they used to say in the lowlands of Perthshire, a bad hoast, i.e., a bad cough. The circumstances — induction of Davidson and opening of the University—required me to be up and out when I ought to have kept the house. The induction on 30th April, the conversazione on 2nd May, and the introduction on 4th May had their own little trials, but they passed off well. He preached on Sabbath evening with much acceptance. I have the feeling that he is well fitted for the position. He is page 194genial, and can wait for the highest seat. The ministers were at the induction in large numbers. The office-bearers invited them with their wives to a sort of tea-dinner in the classroom. The matter went off with flying colours. All was merry as a marriage bell."

Some months later a serious domestic calamity befell the Doctor, in the death of his trusted housekeeper. How much he felt her loss the following letter testifies. It is dated the 27th September, 1890:—"I have had sickness in the house and death. Mrs Macfarlane, my faithful housekeeper, died after an illness of some three months, about ten days ago. For thirteen years she was a perfect treasure in the house. She lived and laboured for our well-being with a loyalty of the highest order. She was with us when Margaret, who had been an inmate of the family for thirty-one years, died, when Alex, died, and when Donald died. I cannot tell you how much I appreciated her services, and how valuable they were. During all these years I had no anxiety about housekeeping, as she managed more wisely and more economically than I could have done. She feared God, and sought to do all things to please Him.

"I am keeping well despite a slight hoarseness and cough, which are unwilling to leave me. But this fine weather will help their departure. I am now writing on the verandah in the early morning, and admiring the verdure of the lawn and the blossoms of the trees, and the life-giving power of the air and the sunshine.

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"Davidson is working cheerfully and honestly… We have vacancies all round. I wish we had four men of piety, good sense, and fair preaching ability."

At the annual congregational meeting in November, Dr Stuart said: "While thinking of this meeting, and of the story of our congregation, these words of the psalmist of Israel rang in my ears, 'the former loving kindnesses of the Lord;' and I said to myself they have been experienced in a high degree by our founders, and their successors all down our congregational history—by our founders in realising some thirty-two years ago that the time had fully come for starting in Dunedin a second church of our order, in promptly proceeding with its erection and equipment, inspired by the assurance of the goodwill and support of their fellow settlers, and by their successors in the felt continuance of the disposition and ability to labour for its maintenance, and working in the best interests of the community. Personally, I have counted among God's former loving kindnesses to myself my selection to be the first minister, the princely welcome I received on landing on these shores, and the provision that was in progress for my comfortable housing, and for the accommodation of the settlers that might attach themselves to the new organization, in the form of the largest and costliest ecclesiastical structure that had yet been undertaken in the Colony. Of the noble band that started the enterprise, the greater part by far have entered on 'the rest that remaineth': but they are continued in their successors in office and membership, and whole-heartedness in the work of page 196the Lord. The faith and goodwill which strengthened and gladdened the congregation in its formative period are still its source of strength and success, and never more than in the days passing over us. In the course of the year which has just closed, you have made in the appointment of a co-pastor provision which, through the Divine blessing, will help to secure the peace and prosperity of the congregation for another generation. Need I say that the survivors of the original company are assured that their colleagues and successors are as loyal as themselves to the glorious Gospel, and the Church at whose table we one and all delight to gather, and to the Colony and its institutions, industrial, scholastic, social, and religious. Pardon me for saying that I count among tokens of God's present loving kindnesses the kindly consideration extended to me by my fellow-citizens, and especially by the congregation, and which tends to make my work and residence in mine own romantic city 'as the days of heaven on earth.'"

While his own attitude towards the Confession of Faith was one of sincere loyalty, he was tolerant of the views of those who sought its revision through constitutional process. "We are electing seven additional elders," he wrote. "The talk about the Confession is filling their minds with gas. One or two told me they thought they could not honestly receive it as their confession. The fundamental things of the Kingdom of God to the unspiritual are embedded in mystery."

The subject came before the Presbytery of page 197Dunedin at a meeting held in June, 1890, when the complaint of Mr A. C. Begg against the teaching of a minister of the Church was dealt with. That minister, with a curious lack of discretion in one who had solemnly and publicly accepted the Confession, said, in the course of a sermon which he had preached on the election of the Apostle Paul to be a witness for Christ in the world, that "his very soul revolted at the statement of the doctrine in the Standards of the Church." Dr Stuart, in speaking to the question, said "he had been greatly pained by the statements which had been made by some of the ministers against the subordinate Standards of the Church. He was content with the Confession as it stood. Those who were dissatisfied with it had a constitutional way open to them of moving for its revision. To take that would be a wiser and more discreet and consistent line of action than to denounce it as some had done. He thought, however, it would be a more prudent thing for them to wait until the Mother Church and other great Churches had spoken on the matter, and probably they could then follow a little in their wake."

When the Committee on the Confession of Faith presented their report to the Synod in October, 1890, Dr Stuart, in speaking to the motion for its adoption, said "he thought very highly of the Confession; he had been using it for forty years as a very important instrument of his ministry, and he was really of the opinion that he could continue to do so with a good conscience, and with advantage to those who submitted to be instructed and guided by him. The page 198Confession of Faith had conferred extraordinary benefits upon the nations. Those who had embraced it had been in the forefront of liberty—civil and religious—and he for one could never imagine that there were doctrines taught there that were hostile to human progress and salvation."